


Welcome to the Family! You Will Never Need Enemies Again

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: Two Blades Series [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels still have Powers and Wings, Demon Dean Winchester, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Gallows Humor, Gore, M/M, Minor Character Death, Temporary due to magical CPR, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, divergent from season 9, not-quite-there-yet Mick/Sam, outsider pov, timeline around season 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 08:59:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14469291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: Mick Davies’ mission was to recruit the American hunters as cannon fodder in the Men of Letters’ secret war against the supernatural. But instead of conning Sam Winchester into joining under those terms, Mick struck up a friendship with him, and treated him like a potential ally rather than a pawn. An error in judgment his superiors would like to bring up during Mick’s quarterly performance evaluation. The kind that ends with a bullet in the back of the head.They’re not worried that this will make an enemy out of Sam. The man is weak. He actually came tolikeMick, that’s how deluded he is. With their knowledge, power and connections, the British Men of Letters have nothing to fear from a bunch of scruffy down-at-the-heel hunters.They don’t know who Sam has on speed-dial...





	Welcome to the Family! You Will Never Need Enemies Again

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is about bad-ass guys being nasty and bad-ass, and there is very little other reason for it.  
> This is a continuation of the One Chain, Two Blades fic. You don't need to read it, suffice it to say that Dean never got rid of the Mark of Cain, he eventually fell into corruption and became a Knight of Hell full time. Doesn't mean he's not Sam's brother or Cas's lover anymore, it just means it's now a very, very, VERY bad idea to mess with either of them.

A bullet in the gut and a shattered kneecap. Just the start of the Men of Letters’ severance package, as Mick Davies was well aware.

He tried to breathe through the pain, keep his mind sharp. Mick was a dead man, he knew that, but there might be something he could still do for Sam Winchester. Besides, assuming they were watching this on their monitors, he didn’t want to give his bosses the satisfaction of seeing him throw up or pass out.

A few feet away from where Mick had slumped, Ketch brandished the cell phone in Sam’s direction. “Are you ready to be reasonable?” 

Sam’s muscles were taut against the cuffs manacling him to the wall. His eyes did not leave Ketch’s. “No,” he said shortly, his face fierce and unafraid beneath the bruises and the blood.

Mick’s eyes fluttered shut briefly as he fought a wave of nausea. Damn it... A rational man - a man like Mick - finding himself disarmed, beaten and cuffed in the heart of the Men of Letter’s compound, would have tried to play for time. But Sam wasn’t about to call his friends and possibly lead them into a trap, not even with a gun in his face.

Ketch made a tsk noise. “Are you so bullheaded you can’t see where this is going to end?”

“Yeah? Where is it going to end?” Sam sneered. “Are you going to torture me next? Your Posh Spice look-alike already tried that and she failed. The only way she got anything out of me was by pretending to sleep with me - and hate to break it to you, Ketch, but you’re not my type. Do your worst, _I - don’t - break._ And if you kill me, who’s going to talk Jody and the others into listening to you guys? That’s your end game here, isn’t it? You don’t just want me, you want all of us American hunters to be your little toy soldiers. After the things you’ve done - the people you killed just to ‘clean up’ what you perceived to be monsters, you think I’ll help? Hell, a few years ago I would have been on your hit list for my ESP powers - you think I’ll join you fucking bastards? Even under torture? Give your head a shake and walk away.”

“I am not going to torture you,” Ketch said with heavy patience. “For all you’re a barely educated oik, my superiors think there is still hope for you and your coterie of hunters. You’ve been trying our patience, but we are still willing to work with you, and we’re hoping that you can all prove amenable to reason.”

“Is that what your boot on our neck is called these days?” 

“Our methods are not all to your liking,” Ketch said with faint irony. “I understand. Is our code harsh? Yes. Is our training rigorous? Indeed. But consider what we face. Don’t worry, we would not ask you and your little friends to adhere to the same standards, or to sacrifice as much as we have. We merely ask that you follow our directives, and use our impressive array of weaponry and methods on the monsters you would hunt anyway. My superiors have no wish to harm your little group. You can even retain some limited autonomy if you insist. Whatever it is you think you’ve discovered about us Men of Letters, your kind would still do better with our guidance rather than die opposing us. We are not the enemy here, the monsters blah blah blah-“

“Mick, stay with me,” Sam said sharply, which was when Mick realized he’d been sinking into darkness. Sam might have also been trying to make a point about the so-called righteousness of the organization which had left Mick stranded against a wall with a bullet in his gut. At least Ketch shelved the rah-rah we’re-the-heroes speech and went back to threats.

“Have it your way. I can’t convince you it’s for the best? Fine, but you will tell your friends to stand down and cooperate anyway because you’re weak, Winchester. Much to my regret. I’d heard so much about you two. Sam and Dean Winchester. I cannot say I am overly impressed with you. But your brother would have made an excellent recruit, from what I’ve heard. Pity that angel killed him last year. Now we will never know how he would have measured up.”

Mick felt a flash of resentment at the needless cruelty of those words. Ketch could bury a baker’s dozen of brothers and walk away, but Sam had a heart that hadn’t been re-purposed into a bullet. He didn’t talk about his brother’s death, but it obviously still hurt. Mick had been curious as to why the angel who had been the Winchester’s one-time ally had reputedly executed Dean last year and then disappeared, but he hadn’t pressed. It was that little thing called tact.

“You just told me your orders were not to torture me, so why the hell should I even listen to a word you say?” Sam sneered.

Ketch looked at him for a full ten seconds, and then his expression closed even more than usual, hiding whatever went on underneath. He was completely expressionless as his knife cleared its sheath with a faint sssssk. 

“You lack foresight. Tell me, how long have you been chumming around with our friend Mick here? Quite a few months now. I’ve known him most of my life, but that doesn’t signify. You, however, are soft. So I know you will cave sooner or later, Winchester. The only thing I do not know is how many pieces I will have to remove from my old schoolmate before you do.”

The handcuffs jangled as Sam’s muscles bunched. 

Rather wish I had a suicide pill right about now, Mick thought tiredly. The end of his life was as clear as the blood oozing out from his fingers clenched over his stomach. It was going to be short. But not short enough to hold all the agony and terror that Ketch could still fit in there.

He half expected Sam to threaten or yell. But Sam did not, to Mick’s approval. Don’t give the bastard the satisfaction, my friend. I will hold out as long as I can. Hopefully he’ll make a mistake and accidentally kill me before-... before.

“That’s how you’re going to pressure me to betray my fellow hunters? Mick is one of your own,” said Sam tightly.

“Ah. He was one of our own,” Ketch corrected, smiling like a reptile; no warmth, no joy, no feelings. “But now he’s as soft as you. Did you know he found out about your attempts to infiltrate our system weeks ago?”

Sam gave Mick a wide-eyed look.

“And he hid it from us. He was supposed to, ah, seduce you to our side, Mr Winchester, not the other way around.” 

Despite circumstances, Mick rolled his eyes. He had been sent nine months ago to find a diplomatic way of bringing the American hunters on board, but of course to Ketch, anything that did not involve ballistics might as well be wining and dining by candlelight. 

...Just because his mission hadn’t involved gunfire did not mean Mick was much better than Ketch, though. He’d been sent here to recruit the American hunters as mere cannon fodder in the war which the Men of Letters conducted from their secret lairs. But out here on the front line, things were different. Sam Winchester was different. In the past few months, Mick had gotten to know Sam; a man of rectitude who had survived innumerable hardships, torture, the loss of his brother, and still tried to save people and see the best in them. And Mick had woken up one day with the stupid conviction that this was a better outlook on life than an outfit that made a young boy kill his best friend. Truly he must be insane. 

...He’d wanted this alliance even more after that. That was why he’d turned a blind eye on Sam’s spying - legitimate information gathering, rather, the hunter had simply been trying to form his own opinion of this organization rather than join blindly. Mick had actually respected that, and his friend’s abilities to worm his way into the system. He’d made sure to discreetly restrict the higher security levels, but other than that he’d let Sam dig around, while opening up a lot more information voluntarily. Oh, Mick had really wanted to show Sam all the wonders the Men of Letters could do, and see if the hunter could find different, better ways to use them. He’d hoped to talk both sides into understanding and trusting each other, create a true American branch, with Mick and Sam at the head, using kinder methods when possible, perhaps pave the way to-.... He’d let the strange ebullient optimism that blossomed in him whenever he met Sam blind him. Reality did not work out for the best just because you wanted it to. 

Ketch was looming over him now. “Our superiors have asked me to convey their disappointment in you, Mick. You let the side down. They knew you were, ah, of a sympathetic leaning, but they did not think you would go native quite so quickly. They thought, when push came to shove, you’d do the right thing... and instead you knock out three guards and try to get your big friend away from here before I could chat with him - and one wonders what would have followed. You know the code. You know the cost of betraying our own for the sake of an outsider. No, you see, Sam, Mick here has an appointment with a bullet. But because he’s your friend, he’s going to die incrementally, until you decide to be reasonable. That is all.”

“Mick.” Sam’s voice was soft. “I... I’m sorry.” 

Whether he was talking about the spying or Mick’s short and painful future wasn’t clear. Didn’t matter, the answer was the same either way. Mick forced out a smile past the pain. “Don’t be sorry. And don’t give in to those bast-“

His head slammed into the wall. He hadn’t even seen Ketch lean forward and give him that sharp punch. 

I’m the one who’s sorry, Sam. I’m sorry I tried to trick you. I’m sorry I cozened up to you. I’m sorry I represent something so alien to your way of thinking, I’m sorry I have innocent blood on my hands, I’m sorry for all the dead on my conscience, I’m sorry for not being the man you thought I was. And I’m truly sorry my death is going to hurt you. I wish... I wish things were otherwise.

Mick only sighed and closed his eyes. The last few seconds of reprieve were running out, the real sport was about to begin.

“So, Winchester? What’s the word?”

There was a long silence. Mick’s knee ached, raw and pulsing.

“Well?” 

Still silence.

Mick finally hoisted up his eyelids, puzzled. 

Sam’s expression was not one Mick had ever expected to see there. His friend was a kind man. Mick had never expected to see a look that cold on his face.

“Giving me the silent treatment? Should I do tit for tat?” Ketch tapped Mick’s cheek with the knife, making him jump, and his hemorrhaging gut ache. “Should I start cutting slices out of Mick’s lips and tongue?”

“I know it’s wrong,” said Sam softly, so softly it was almost a sigh.

“No!” Mick hissed. “Don’t do what he-” Then Ketch’s hand slammed against his mouth, forcing his head back against the wall.

“I know I shouldn’t feel this way,” said Sam, still staring at Ketch with an almost void expression. “But I do. You are one sick piece of work, Ketch. And I am going to enjoy seeing you gutted on the floor.”

“Dear me. Threats. How predictable.” 

“Not a threat. You have no clue what you just triggered here, putting my back to the wall like this.” 

Ketch sighed. Not for show; it was so faint Sam didn’t hear it. Mick would have missed it too it if his colleague wasn’t six inches away. Their eyes met over the hand gagging Mick. 

... Sam was wrong - understandably so, but he was wrong. Mick had been Ketch’s colleague for almost twenty years now, as close to being a friend as Ketch ever let anyone, and he knew the man was not a sociopath. He was not going to torture Mick for enjoyment, or for a sense of power. If given the option, he would not be torturing him at all, he would have done the job tidily and Mick would never have seen it coming. Ketch was an excellent interrogator, he’d gotten information out of the toughest monsters before, but at the end of the day he prided himself on the cleanness and professionalism of his kills more than their brutality. A twisted sort of mercy perhaps, though it was worth remembering he applied it to all equally, one-time allies and enemies, monsters and humans, men, women and children. A democracy of killing. Ketch did not make judgment calls, that right belonged to the Men of Letters. The faint crease in his brow, the way he met Mick’s gaze... not quite regret, but an aloof apology of sorts, a ‘sorry, old boy, but orders are orders, you know how it goes.’ 

Mick had indeed known the score, what he was risking. The only thought that crossed his mind, other than worry over Sam, was a strange one. _Ketch- Arthur. I wish you could see what I found out, that you do not have to do this. There is another way. There is always another way._ But even if he wasn’t gagged, Mick wouldn’t have said it. Why waste his breath and make his abdominal injury ache? It was pointless. Where Ketch was standing, there was no compromise, no possible mercy, only orders. Off the top of his head, Mick couldn’t think of anything, not even an act of God, that could make Ketch reconsider his stance; begging certainly wasn’t going to cut it, and Mick preferred to die with what little dignity the blood seeping from various parts of him still afforded.

Ketch thumbed Mick’s lip apart and glanced at Sam inquiringly. Mick gritted his teeth - briefly contemplated biting him, but the knife was waiting for him to open his mouth. 

Then the hand on his face loosened. Ketch looked away, over his shoulder.

For thirty seconds and multiple fraught heartbeats, Mick waited, wondering at the reprieve. What had caught Ketch’s attention?

Then he felt it. A faint tremor. It vibrated through the floor beneath him.

Ketch stood up, gave Sam one suspicious look and then headed towards the second half of the room, sheathing the knife with a precise gesture. They were in the nerve center of the command station. It was dominated by the large conference table, and there were banks of instruments and a large map screen all along one side. Small offices stood cheek by jowl opposite as well as on the mezzanine level. The last wall was clear bar a few pinned photographs, a warding symbol and rings welded into the joists for manacles. Mick worked for an organization that could handcuff prisoners along one wall of their conference room, and until he’d met Sam he’d never realized how wrong that was... The techs had been sitting at their consoles and computers with their backs turned to Mick as the latter was shot and tortured. As if it was all in a day’s work. Or maybe they were just afraid to turn around, in case this was seen as protest. Neither possibility was in any way a good thing, Mick now realized. 

“What was that?” Ketch asked one of the techs.

“Sir, we’re picking up a disturbance. I... am not sure what we’re looking at here.” 

Mick heard a soft _snik_ next to him. Then an arm slipped around his shoulder while a hand eased beneath his and put stronger pressure on his stomach injury. Mick blinked repeatedly, trying to get the graying veil over his eyesight to lift. 

“Sam- how did you-” he gaped at the handcuffs lying on the floor a few feet away. Ketch had thoroughly searched the hunter, how- never mind that! “Run for it. Get away!” he hissed. The place was crawling with troops, but some might not yet know that Sam had been placed on the persona non grata list. His chances of survival were certainly greater than here.

“Shh, it’s okay, Mick.” Sam’s face tightened as he glanced at the knee that Ketch had crushed beneath his boot as an introduction to matters at hand a few minutes ago. “I can’t promise I’ll get you out of here alive. I wish I could, but this is going to get dicey. Still, better this way than _their_ way.”

Mick wasn’t sure what his friend was talking about. He focused in panic on the killer’s back not far away. Ketch was leaning forward, hand propped on the backrest of the observer at the monitors.

“There, put that one up on the big screen,” Ketch ordered. “Winchester, I know you’re loose back there. If you do anything stupid, I will shoot out your legs. You know this.”

“Oh don’t worry, you fucking psycho, I am going absolutely nowhere,” Sam said, quiet and deadly. Mick groaned.

The big screen blinked up an image, a grainy shot of the exterior. It was getting dark outside, the scene was lit by the floodlights around the compound. 

Mick had half hoped, half feared to see a dozen American hunters with explosives laying siege to the place. But there were only two people as far as he could make out. The image didn’t give many details. Two men roughly ten meters away from the nearest barb wired fence, looking at the compound. They stood two feet apart and for five seconds they didn’t do anything. Then they lifted the hands closest to each other in eery synchronization and casually brought the weapons they were holding - short swords? Cudgels? - together like they were toasting the compound’s health. Maybe it was long-stemmed champagne glasses they were holding. Mick wondered if he was getting delirious.

A new tremor ran through the installation. On the table in the conference room, a decanter and its glasses chimed, and dust fell from the hanging ceiling.

“Who is that and what are they doing?” Ketch asked in dangerous tone.

“I- they’re emitting arcane pulses. I, um, I think.”

“You _think_. “

Even Mick wasn’t impressed. The Men of Letters were supposed to have the greatest experts, the most highly advanced equipment. ‘Um I think’ was not an acceptable answer.

In the picture, the men knocked their weapons together again, harder this time. They weren’t looking at each other, their concentration on the compound, the gesture looked small and innocuous even as it sent a grinding echoing _crack_ through the ground beneath the struts holding up the conference room.

“It’s just- I don’t understand what these readings are saying, these two energies don’t- they _can’t_ show up together. It’s sending the readings haywire.”

Ketch leaned over and looked at a dial. Then he tapped it. The needle was bouncing back and forth like a metronome tackling a truly exciting tempo. Mick was losing consciousness by increments, so he could be mistaken, but if that was the dial he thought it was, then the tech’s hesitation was understandable. That was like seeing a thermometer trying to show both combustible temperatures and a frigid sub-arctic chill at the very same time.

“What’s going on?” Mick whispered, and wondered why he thought the man holding him might know.

“I had to do something I did not want to do,” Sam said, voice a monotone. 

“What-...”

“I broke the glass and pulled the alarm. I wish Ketch hadn’t made me do it. The others... not everyone here deserves this.”

“How- how did you- this whole place is impervious to electromagnetic signals when it’s on lockdown. How did you communicate-“

“Hope and a prayer,” said Sam in a voice that tried for humor but didn’t quite succeed. “Now let’s-“

On screen, the two men lifted their hands up to their chests, mirror images in creepy synch. Next time they smashed their weapons together the gesture looked sure, hard, and the wrenching _crack_ far beneath the compound sounded like granite breaking. Then they did it again, and again and again-

A tremor ripped through the room and something broke with a loud crack. Two of the monitors blinked out and a pile of documents fell to the floor.

“Let’s just hope the wards break before the ceiling does,” Sam said tightly. He was leaning over Mick now as if to shield him.

“Wards?”

“Yeah, this place is heavily protected.”

“I know that!” Mick had placed half the seals on this place himself and even invented an improved variation on one of them. “What’s trying to get in? Christ!”

The floor bucked him up almost an inch off the ground, this was an out and out earthquake. The hanging ceiling over one part of the mezzanine collapsed. Mick found himself choking on dust as well as bile. 

Many of the monitors were black now, but the central screen was still lit. It only showed a shaky view of the barbed wire and empty space beyond, the two figures were nowhere to be seen.

Mick gasped and seized up against the wall. He was staring right at the two men from the feed, they were standing in front of him and Sam, facing the rest of the room.

A warning klaxon was ringing in the background, and sprinklers had turned on in one of the offices nearby. Armed guards were lifting their rifles on the intruders as their presence was noticed.

“Cas!” Sam uncoiled a little from his protective hunch around Mick. “Here! Quick!”

One of the two men looked over his shoulder, then turned around.

“Sam, are you alright?” he asked in a gravelly voice.

“I’m fine, but my friend’s been injured. Heal him and we’ll get out of here.”

Heal?

The man knelt quickly and extended a hand towards Mick, who stared at it uncertainly. Fingers brushed his forehead and Mick felt an odd kind of inner lurch, as if every molecule in his body had done a little two-step jig and then settled again.

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam breathed out, relief in his voice. Which was when Mick realized that the pain ripping him apart at the seams was gone.

“Wh- what-” 

The person who’d healed him with a single touch glanced over his shoulder, at Ketch pointing a gun in his direction, at the guards, at the other man standing nearby. “You should leave.”

“I know.” Sam tugged Mick to his feet. “Come on, Mick, let’s get out of here.”

“But-” there were at latest tally eight guards armed with machine guns pointed at them and their would-be rescuers.

Ketch was speaking in a walkie talkie, Mick thought he heard the words, “Code Charlie Bravo”. Code- 

Mick’s brain - which was normally more agile than this - finally kicked in. Shit!

“You- you’re an angel?!” 

“This is Castiel,” Sam said quietly. “He’s-“

“You need to get out of here!” Mick shoved at the man’s shoulder. Wasn’t Castiel the angel who had killed Sam’s brother? Why was Sam- oh whatever! “Code Charlie Bravo means that they’re about to-“

The angel gasped- and turned into a smear of light warping around a scream.

“Cas!” Sam dropped Mick’s arm. Mick staggered back against the wall, though the feeling of weakness in his limbs was fading fast. He felt great. This state of affairs was bound not to last. Sam had just lost his cavalry. Now Ketch would have to put up with the drudgery of shooting Mick all over again to get back to square one.

Oh, the other man was still there though. He’d twisted around to stare at the spot where the angel had disappeared. His features tugged at Mick’s memory, he’d seen this man before. Not in the flesh, from a photograph. 

“One intruder left!” Lt Sanders barked into his walkie talkie while his men kept their aim on the remaining target. “Hit Charlie Bravo again!”

“No need,” Ketch said coolly, his gun pointing right at the center of the man’s chest. “This one’s no angel, it’s just another Winchester. I see reports of your demise were too hasty, Dean.”

Dean Winchester. The appropriate mental file flipped open in Mick’s mind, the photo there a match for the one he’d seen in Sam’s bunker. The one Sam had been staring at one evening with a look on his face that had rent Mick’s chest (because already Sam Winchester had started to make him feel a bit more than he should...)

Dean Winchester turned slowly around and stared at Ketch and Sanders and the other guards. Then he lifted the object he had in his hand. Mick had thought it was a weapon initially, but it looked more like something out of a natural history museum. A gray piece of- of bone? There were actual teeth on the thing. 

Dean used the object to scratch his forehead. ”Wow. Did you bozos really just send the better half to the penalty box? That was pretty shortsighted.”

He sounded remarkably flippant about it, oddly enough. 

“You also beat up my brother by the looks of it. Heh.” Dean was smiling faintly. “But since you’re not runnin’ away, I guess you don’t know what you’re dealin’ with. I’ll give you a hint. You’re right. I ain’t no angel.”

Ketch lowered his gun and coldly fired right into Dean’s leg.

Dean grunted and went down on one knee.

Sam tensed. And completely unexpectedly, turned around and pulled Mick towards the nearest exit.

“What-“

“Come on, we need to leave,” said Sam tightly - as if his brother hadn’t just been shot by a stone-cold killer in the middle of a fortified compound full of guards licensed to eliminate intruders on sight. “This is going to get messy.”

Yes, messy for your brother! Mick was about to object- but Sam used his greater height and strength to manhandle Mick to the door.

The hallway was a mess of fallen building elements and at least one live cable fritzing and sparking. The quake had brought part of the place down.

“Shit,” Sam muttered between his teeth.

Mick looked over his shoulder. Ketch and the guards were between them and the other exit. So was Dean Winchester, back on his feet.

Ketch was staring at Dean with his eyes narrowed. “I see you have some tricks that were not in our information package.”

“Oh, buddy. You have no idea.” There was a hint of something behind the jocularity running through Dean Winchester’s voice that made Mick’s gut twist as if the bullet was still in there. “You’re fast with that trigger. Took me off guard. But maybe you should check what you’re aiming at first and if what you’re packin’ is up to the task.”

“Mick, this way,” Sam said almost subvocally. “We need to slip out-“

Mick however knew how Men of Letters troops were trained. He hurled himself at Sam and managed to bear the taller man to his knees right before every gun in the place let loose a hail of bullets at the solitary figure. 

A few holes perforated the wall above their heads, then the firing stopped. Mick looked around wildly, expecting to see Dean’s body lying ragged and bloody on the floor.

Dean was still on his feet. He had a hand raised and a whole lot of spent bullets at his feet. 

“This is the matrix, Neo,” he intoned, then in his normal voice, “No, wait, Neo’s the one that stops the bullets. But Fishburne’s more badass than-“

“Demon! We have a demon!” Lt Sanders snapped in his mic. But Ketch, more on the ball, aimed a shot at the ceiling far over Dean’s head. He hit the sprinkler head, which shot away with a ping. Water started to spray.

Dean yelled and fell to his knees, skin starting to smoke. 

Sam gasped. “What the hell?!”

“Holy water in the sprinkler system- standard practice,” Mick bit out while his thoughts skidded over the word _Demon._

Sam cursed and lunged to the left. In three long strides he reached the heavy conference table, which he grabbed and slid in the direction of his brother, writhing on his knees. The ponderous wooden furniture must weigh more than four Micks put together, but Sam moved it in one massive heave.

Ketch coldly aimed his gun at Sam and fired point blank.

Mick had been throwing himself forward, hoping to distract the killer, but knew he’d never make it in time.

The bullet impacted- into the hand that the demon (Dean?) had outstretched to intercept. The demon’s skin was raw and burning, but he’d heaved himself up despite the pain and put himself between Ketch and his brother. 

Then the table was over him, sheltering him from the holy water pouring down. Sam crouched behind him and, as an afterthought, reached out a long arm, snagged Mick and dragged him down with him. 

Ketch snapped into his walkie talkie, “Get weapon SU12 up to the command center _now_ -“

A rumbling sound interrupted him.

Mick gasped. As a master of Lore, he had some minor abilities to read auras. In the mundane plane, Dean was crouched beneath the table, but in a higher sphere a thought away, the faintest shadow of two huge-... excrescences stretched out from his back like mangled bat wings, arcing out, bringing darkness in their wake. A light fizzed and burst nearby. A couple of the techs, those more attuned to the mystical, went white in the face and bolted, and fortunately the others followed.

Not just ‘a demon’, thought the part of Mick that was the cold, analytical researcher of all things magical and supernatural he’d been trained to be at Kendricks and beyond. But... that wasn’t possible; for a mortal man to have died and reached that level so fast - and hanging out with a mortal and an _angel_ \- what the hell was going on on this crazy continent?!

Up, up- and then those flaring black _things_ whipped down once.

Focused force shredded the conference room. Mick had braced instinctively, crouching close to the ground with Sam’s arm over him protectively. But the force seemed to overlook them, they did not end up slammed against a wall like many of Sanders’ troops. 

The glass wall of every office shattered, the heavy conference table blew away like a piece of cardboard in a hurricane, the monitors all exploded in showers of sparks, the ceiling caved in and crashed into the mezzanine level upstairs, interrupting the flow of water to the sprinklers, one of which fell to the conference room floor with a clonk.

The room went dark for a heartbeat, then the emergency lighting flickered on; the red Exit signs turned the wreck of the conference room into a hellish landscape, in which the man now standing in front of Mick and Sam looked thoroughly at home.

“You good, Dean?” Sam asked tightly, eyes flickering to the ceiling, the destroyed sprinkler system, then towards the door.

“I’m awesome,” his brother answered with a cold chuckle. Then he was gone. 

Mick blinked. Something fell and bounced into his line of vision ten yards away, a dark blob in the bad lighting. A- it looked like a - no it was, oh mercy, it was a human head. One of the guards. 

The demon had materialized in front of the troops, he had Sanders in a crushing hold by the throat and the weapon - which hadn’t looked sharp at all - had beheaded the guard next to him. Mick was as cold-blooded as his training expected him to be, but he wasn’t a field agent or used to up-close-and-personal violence. The upturned face of the guard - someone he knew in passing - made his heart rate spike and stutter. 

Ketch had his gun pointed at the demon, but he didn’t pointlessly fire. His hand was frisking over his breast pockets, his back pockets as he stepped coldly away from the demon slaughtering the rest of the guards; he’d be looking for a magazine of devil trap bullets. Oh, but he didn’t have his usual equipment with him, being in his home base and with only the torture of one Mick Davies on his to-do list. From the way he grasped the regular gun with both hands and started casting around for a solution, he must have remembered he wasn’t packing what he needed in these circumstances, and the compound was too much of a wreck for the more serious artillery to reach him in time.

Unfortunately the killer still had options; Mick could read an ugly one cross Ketch’s expression as he caught sight of Sam pulling Mick towards the distant doorway. Ketch lunged towards them - the last guard had fallen, but Ketch was only a few feet away-

A blur- and a sordid visceral _chunk_ sound. 

Dean had materialized between Sam and Ketch, and Ketch had run himself straight into the weapon Dean held and that in no way should be sharp enough to sink into guts that easily.

A moment of stillness. Ketch was staring down at the blade in his belly. Dean didn’t move, he wasn’t even looking at Ketch, he seemed to be idly admiring the setup of the room around them instead.

A grimace twisted Ketch’s face and his hand leaped up, gun swinging towards Sam-

The knife twisted once sharply. 

The gun wobbled and sank as Ketch gasped, harsh and pained.

There was a faint noise. Like a ‘hmm’ from Dean. Appreciative. 

Ketch’s gun hand was still weaving through the air, though it seemed to have lost the strength to point towards its target.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the knife twisted one more increment, and the gun finally hit the floor as Ketch groaned and half collapsed into Dean, the knife pretty much the only thing still holding him up, pinned like a crime scene photo to an evidence board.

Dean reached over with his free hand and gripped Ketch’s hair, lifting his face up as he finally turned to glance at his opponent.

“You have interesting eyes.”

Ketch glared. There was bloody bile on his lips and his face was white with agony, but he did not beg or bargain. He must have realized it’d get him nowhere.

“But trying to take Sammy hostage was three kinds of stupid. He looks gangling but he could still flatten your ass. Besides... it’s funny you think that would stalemate me. Hey, you still with me?” Dean shook him once by the hair. Ketch’s eyes had been fluttering, but they fixed on him again.

“There you are. Good. We don’t have long. Those liver arteries, they bleed like a bitch, right? And I need to be somewhere else pretty soon. Once the angel busts out from where I can’t reach him, he’ll probably need my help. But think of it as a breather rather than an escape. Because where you’re going? I have my ins and outs down there - as you can guess. I’m going to make a point of coming down to say hi soon. And this time I won’t have to run off to save anyone before we’re done. You catch my drift?”

Ketch was staring at him in growing realization. “You can’t-...”

“Can. Wanna. Gonna. Shouldn’t have fucked with my boyfriend or my brother. You put them in danger. I let that abide, every other clown out there will try the same thing. ‘sides, the Mark gets bored of plain out murder at times. Gotta keep the beast fed, and you have kibble written all over ya. So yeah. Be seein’ you.”

Ketch tensed-

Mick closed his eyes, but the noise that followed - it left little to the imagination. Neither did the smell of blood and viscera. Despite the fact that Arthur would have done worse to him just ten minutes ago, Mick still felt like he was going to throw up. He glanced up at Sam, who’d gone a bit pale but was staring down at the mess on the floor with a steady look. Maybe a mental ‘I did warn you...’

Near the exit, someone made a garbled sound of horror. More guards had shown up with what looked like a small bazooka, but was probably something much more deadly to demons. 

Not that it mattered. By the time Mick had registered their presence, Dean was no longer standing over the mangled remains of Ketch but was slicing up, one long swinging arc which would have been a beautiful volley shot if what he’d been holding was a tennis racket and not-... whatever that was. It sliced one of soldiers, severing muscle, ribcage, chest and shoulder with equal ease. Mick saw a flash of lung tissue expand into the cut before ruptured arteries drowned everything out. The poor man fell back in a spray of blood. Dean turned towards the other two, who were trying to ready the weapon.

Sam hauled Mick by the hand and pulled him almost off his feet as they raced towards the doorway. Then ran right past Dean’s back as he hammered in the skull of a second guard. The third man was running somewhere up ahead of them. Sam hesitated and then dodged down a side corridor, as if he considered it dangerous to follow the guard, though Mick estimated the man wasn’t going to turn around and fire on them, or stop running before he reached London. 

“Sam- wait- regiment B arrived last night- they- somewhere-” Mick almost bit the tip of his tongue off as he staggered. They had to stop, move forward prudently, they could have guards on their trail but also right up ahead. If they weren’t careful, they could run right into half a platoon.

They ran into Dean instead. 

“Leaving so soon, Sammy?” he asked as if he’d been waiting there, leaning against the corridor wall, for the past few minutes.

Sam spun around. Mick found himself up against a wall with his friend’s tall body covering him like a rampart, Sam’s chest pressed against his.

A rasp of boots on linoleum, coming closer. Mick could only blink dazedly at Sam’s sternum a few inches from his nose. What- what-

Dean appeared in his field of vision, leaning to peer over his brother’s shoulder. “So what is that?”

Air whistled through Sam’s nose, then he said tightly, “This is a friend. He’s not one of them.”

“A friend. And not one of them.” Dean leaned further to look around Sam. Sam pulled Mick so his large body was completely between the two men. Which was when Mick realized it had not been human reinforcements he and Sam had been running from... The sound of Ketch’s insides hitting the floor resounded in his memory, turning his stomach.

Dean made a gesture. Invisible hands plucked Sam away from Mick and thrust him up against the opposite wall, not slammed but held quite firmly nonetheless. Then Dean had Mick by the lapels. Mick stared into green eyes. The air stank of sulfur, blood and sin.

His paltry mystical senses went into meltdown. The sheer power- it was familiar, the magnitude of it. Mick had been one of those scrying the American continent when an evil that should no longer walk the earth started striding around like it owned the place, sending the somewhat more congenial Crowley running for cover. Abaddon, the last Knight of Hell. Had he/she/it been the last, though? It didn’t make sense, but here - right up close and personal - Mick was getting slammed by the same sense of power and demonic energy, though with Abaddon it had been at a comforting distance, not up close and in his face. 

His senses near overwhelmed, blinded and deafened, Mick’s analytical side still functioned coldly, as he’d been taught in the harshest of schools. Not Abaddon. This was definitely not Abaddon fitted into Winchester’s skin. She’d been pure evil, a grinding ugly darkness like the grime at the bottom of a bloodied kennel. This was just as strong but with a different flavor; it thrummed with wild chaos, the furious indiscriminate thunder of an avalanche coming down on some and sparing others at random. It- it- Mick retched and forced his ability to read auras to shut down. 

Now he was just looking at Dean Winchester, pinning him to the wall by a grip on his shirt; green eyes, a dash of freckles, a crooked smile and the weapon which had eviscerated Ketch used to gently lift up Mick’s chin to examine his face. It...was perhaps a slight improvement? Behind the demon’s back, Sam was whispering a continuous thread of “Please, Dean, he’s my friend, don’t do this, please don’t, you don’t need to do this, Dean-“

Mick’s eyes flickered toward Sam. He didn’t understand any of this, but if this creature was a possible danger to Sam as well-... His mind ran through his internal library of sigils, runes and words of power he could trace against the wall behind him, since the demon was so obligingly giving him a writing surface to work with. In the meantime, stiff upper lip. This creature would not have the satisfaction of seeing him flinch, especially if this would keep his attention on Mick and not on Sam. 

Dean Winchester grinned in something like sudden delight.

Mick cleared his throat. “So, what are you planning-“

“Hm. A friend. I see,” Dean interrupted. “Relax, Sammy, I scratched the itch. Besides, this guy looks like he’ll be more interesting alive than dead.” The weapon was no longer poking at him, it’d been slipped into the back of his jean’s belt. Now there were hard fingers grasping his chin and turning his head this way and that. Mick allowed it, but behind his back, his fingernails scraped his palm raw, drawing blood.

The savage grin widened and reached the green eyes, making them sparkle strangely.  
“Oh yeah, interesting. Welcome to the family. Assuming your new in-laws didn’t scare you off. Hmm, you look as tough as a wet kleenex, but no... I don’t think you scare easy... It was about time Sammy brought home someone with a little bit of blood in their veins, and on their hands.” Mick froze, tense at the thought that Dean somehow knew about the trickle down his palm behind his back... or worse, that that was not what the demon was talking about at all. 

“Dean, get your mind out of the gutter,” Sam said at normal volume. He was no longer pinned to the wall, his tension had eased, though he was suddenly a bit red in the face. It occurred to Mick that Sam hadn’t been in danger or worried for his own sake at all, it was Mick he’d been trying to protect. Shielding him with his own body. And now he stood there, flushed and prickly, with an expression that- that- that Mick was going to carefully catalog away in his memory for later perusal, assuming they were still alive a minute from now, because that expression was-...

“Gutter. Riiiight.” The demon smirked, apparently just as intrigued by that expression as Mick was. Dean released the handful of shirt he was gripping and stepped back. “Are you able to get out of this mousetrap without getting your ass shot? ‘Cause I need to go help- oh, speak of the devil.”

Five feet away, where a rush of air and the sound of a flap had drawn their attention, Castiel was straightening up from a crouch. He looked ruffled and angry. These were not good things for an angel to be, Mick judged.

The demon took a step in his direction. “Hey, babe. I was about to go kick down the pearly gates and fuck the consequences. Got company?” 

“Yes,” Castiel spat out with a hard glance at the ceiling.

“Sam, watch your ass.”

With that casual leave-taking tossed over a shoulder, both entities were abruptly gone.

“Damn those bastards,” muttered Sam. Which seemed a good summary of what had just occurred, except he was also staring up at the ceiling instead of the now empty space that had contained the demon and his- his - um, whatever ‘babe’ represented in the higher scheme of things mythical and divine (at this point Mick was not going to hazard a guess.) “When your troops sent Cas to the cornfield, that lit up the heavenly switchboard. The hardliners up there are always on the lookout for ways of pinning him when Dean’s not around. Because those _idiots_ still think that divide and conquer is the way to handle the two of them, instead of a sure-fire lead-on to complete and total annihilation... Tch. Cas got away, but I bet he’s got a flight on his tail.” 

“A- a flight of what, jets?” 

“Of angels. Him and Dean will be okay now they’re together, but I’m not so sure about the scenery. We need to get away from anything that looks smiteable.”

“Is that even a word?” Mick found himself asking dazedly. He was a little overwhelmed by the evening he’d just had.

“It is in my family. C’mon!”

He grabbed Mick’s hand again and they were off at a dead run towards one of the exits. Mick heard a noise like a sonic boom right overhead. The compound’s walls, what were left of them, rattled.

The hatch clanged shut behind them. Sam heaved a short sigh of relief as he noticed a dozen people, techs and clerks for the most part, standing around looking scared and confused. He shouted at them to ‘get the hell out of dodge’, then dragged Mick away from the organization the latter had dedicated his life and soul to these past twenty years. Mick staggered, wondering dazedly what he was running from, and where he was running to.

...Sam’s hand was warm as it wrapped around his own still, and he broke stride to ask Mick quickly if he was okay, with a genuine look of concern.

“Dandy,” said Mick, wondering when he’d get to meet his brand new in-laws again and if he’d survive the encounter this time. 

That crazed tart lady Bevell had tried to warn him. Winchesters. They made life... interesting.

**Author's Note:**

> Next weekend, or weekend after depending on my schedule, I'll post a follow-up fic to this one. Less blood and guts, more romantic comedy as poor Mick tries to hook up with Sam despite the gauntlet of his 'brothers in law', as well as navigating the disaster zone that exists around any Winchester. And Ketch shows up again! You knew he wasn't dead...


End file.
